The HUBzero platform will be released as open source for the first time at the HUBbub 2010 workshop 13-14 April. The release of the powerful platform could change the way you research, collaborate, and teach.

HUBzero has been described as a cloud, a content management system, and “FaceBook for scientists.” In a way, these are all true. Yet none of them adequately convey the capabilities of this platform.

It all began with a web infrastructure called Punch, which was developed in 1995 at Purdue University in order to deploy simple science gateways. Scientists could use Punch to create a web form that, when filled out and submitted, would run batch jobs.

At the time, this was pretty revolutionary. But by 2002, it was time for an update. So they began work on the now well-known nanotechnology cloud, nanoHUB.org.